


The Rules

by musicdorch



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, Surprise Angst, but mostly crack really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicdorch/pseuds/musicdorch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t long after their wedding that Rory and Amy decide they need to set some ground rules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rules

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always nervous posting in a new fandom, and here I am doing it on a new site. Cheers!
> 
> Beta by the lovely [madasaboxofcats](http://archiveofourown.org/users/madasaboxofcats/pseuds/madasaboxofcats).

It isn’t long after their wedding that Rory and Amy decide they need to set some ground rules. It isn’t that they don’t love the Doctor, but his ignorance of all things human can be really inconvenient at times.

*

Rule 1: Knocking.

Pounding footsteps are all the warning they get before the door to their room in the TARDIS swings open. The Doctor charges in, work goggles askew and screwdriver in hand. 

“Is everyone alright?” The door swings awkwardly on its hinges as the newlyweds scrabble for covers. 

“Oi! Ever hear of knocking?”

“It sounded like someone was being killed.” The Doctor’s eyes dart to the bedpost, the light switch, his shoes, anywhere but the couple doing _things_ in _his_ TARDIS.

“Everything’s good here, thanks.”

“Right.” The Doctor turns on his heel and makes it only a few paces before he wheels back around. “You’re both alright then?” 

“ _Out!_ ”

Rory drops his head back to the pillow. The next day, they all set Rule 1 to paper and agree never to speak of it again. 

* 

Rule 2: Beds.

It started with the bunk beds, but that was far from the last of it.

“I don’t care if it’s a bed _with a ladder,_ I was serious last time. No. Bunk. Beds,” Amy says, and if there’s anything the Doctor has learned, it’s that Amy tends to get her way.

Unfortunately for Amy, the Doctor misses the point. After the trundle bed, the short-lived water bed, and the bizarre sleeping pods that felt eerily like coffins, they knew a new rule was in order. (That zero-G bed really was the last straw. Rory will never forget waking up to Amy’s toe in his ear.)

“But where’s the fun in that,” the Doctor whines when they tell him the TARDIS is to give them a proper mattress on a proper frame with the proper amount of gravity. The couple exchange a look. 

“You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know. You and your…humany business.”

“I’ll add it to the list,” Rory calls after him as he disappears down the hall.

*

Rule 3: Wii.

The Doctor, as far as they knew, had never kept what could be considered “regular” hours. It’s understandable, really¾when you’re traveling in the TARDIS, “night” is whenever you want it to be. But then Amy and Rory return to Real Life, and that means sleeping when it’s dark. 

So when the Doctor comes to stay, they quickly agree that a new rule is in order. 

“HA! Gotcha!”

Rory and Amy awake with a start.

“-time is it?” She looks as disoriented as he feels. Rory fumbles for his watch on the bedstand.

“Three a.m.”

“I might actually kill him this time,” she mumbles as she shoves her feet into her slippers and storms downstairs, Rory in tow. She pulls the plug on the Wii before the Doctor even registers that he has company.

“What was that for?” he demands, brandishing his Wiimote.

“We were trying. to. sleep,” Amy grits out.

“You were the one who told me regular blokes play video games, and I’ve got to blend in, haven’t I?”

“Not in the middle of the night, you don’t. We have _jobs_ , remember? Jobs that we have to be up for in, oh, three and half hours?”

“What am I meant to do, then? Watch _sport_?” The disdain that curls his lip is more irritating than comical at this hour.

“Just…find something on the telly, will you? Something _quiet._ ” 

“You’re not my mother,” he grumbles as he flops dramatically onto the couch and clicks the screen on. He startles away from Amy’s finger, suddenly in his face.

“Rule 3,” she says, ominously.

He’s added it to the list himself by the time they come down in the morning.

* 

Rule 4: Strays.

When they find the Ood in their toilet, they decide it might be about time for Rule 4.

“But everybody loves an Ood!”

“We’re not just talking about the Ood, Doctor. First,” Rory holds up a single finger to begin enumerating their “guests,” “we wake up with Sylvia Plath in the sitting room, though I can’t imagine why you thought to pick her up. Thought I might turn suicidal myself, the way she carried on. And she stayed for weeks!”

“Who was the really loud one? That…rhino guy. We could hear the two of you carrying on all the way from the swimming pool!”

“The Nestine couple. Lovely folks.”

“And you can’t forget the cowboy.” Amy raises an eyebrow at their companion. “Doctor, you have _got_ to stop picking up strays.”

“Oi, you’ve liked some of the ones I’ve picked up!”

“Just what are you implying?”

“He’s not talking about you, stupid.” Amy glances at the Doctor. “Are you?”

The Doctor clears his throat. “Anyway, fine, no more ‘strays.’” He exaggerates the air quotes. “At least not in your home. It’s the best I can do.”

“Fine. But it’s going on the list.”

*

Rule 5: Sonicing.

“Doctor, did you sonic my phone again?”

“Of course I did, it had gone all…wibbly. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“It wasn’t ‘wibbly.’ Now every time I turn it on, it does this!”

She holds it up, and the whooshing TARDIS landing sounds echo through the control room. The TARDIS herself shudders and groans in protest.

“If it wasn’t wibbly, then why was it making those horrific screeching sounds?”

“That wasn’t screeching, it was Cindy Lauper. The singer?” The TARDIS tone goes off again.

“See? That’s a brilliant noise.” 

“It isn’t brilliant. Do you know how many people have asked me why I have Darth Vader as my ring tone?”

“Darth who?”

“At least he didn’t program it to the Galifreyan national anthem. Sister Margaret thought it was the devil’s tongue and doused me in holy water. Bit hard to explain to the other nurses, that,” Rory adds from the doorway and pushes himself off the wall. “I vote no more sonicing of any of Amy’s or my things.”

They both watch as he grudgingly adds “no unnecessary sonicing” to the list.

*

They go awhile without any new rules, after that. They may not see each other often, but the Doctor keeps their list taped to the console all the same. It makes him smile to read it, the three different handwritings as different as the people whose hands they came from.

But then there’s Manhattan and Winter Quay, and the list no longer makes him smile. It reminds him of endings.

When the Doctor adds the final rule, it’s more of a note to himself. Underneath the time-worn list he hangs the final note from his friend, typed out on the page of a book he was never meant to read:

_Don’t travel alone._


End file.
